Somatic Resonance is a phenomenon in which bodies impact each other at a vibrational and energetic frequency.

It is a relational, being to being process that emerges from deepened states of presence, awareness, attunement, empathy, mirroring, intuition, and kinesthetic sensing and supports the release and reorganization of held energy in the body.

Both The Alexander Technique and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy are processes that allow us to come into a therapeutic relationship with habitual, often protective, tendencies. Each modality, though working with different frameworks and body systems, requires Somatic Resonance to emerge for change to take place. Through the support of heart-centered listening and deepening in embodied awareness, experience and resource, lasting transformations in mind-body patterning can occur in each.

The Alexander Technique mostly focuses on providing better structural and functional support through re-coordinating the musculoskeletal and respiratory systems, while BCST works more directly with the nervous system and fluid body. Alexander Technique offers a means whereby you have conscious choice to make changes in thoughts, movements and behaviors. BCST allows time and space for deeper, more subtle, universal systems of wisdom and healing to emerge.

Each offers a holistic view on healing and considers how thoughts, attention, feelings, sensations, movement, and breath influence our sense of self, spirit, resilience, and ability to connect with our communities and environment.

Wondering which modality will better support your needs?

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Preferred pronouns: she/they

I am an Alexander Technique Teacher, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist in training, Poet, Dancer, Performance Artist and Mother.

My journey into somatic practices, body-led healing and embodied social activism is inextricably linked to my work as a dancer, writer, artist and mother. To me, healing is a form of creation and creating a form of healing. My creative practices bring me into conversation with the emergence of different potentialities in form, attention and expression, be that through thought, action, performance, ritual, material object, language, energy. They allow me to imagine, reimagine, and transform materials, to live more fluidly and deeply with possibility, and to bring me to new depths of attending, perceiving, being, expressing, valuing and feeling. My healing practices, in their greatest capacities, do the same with the attention, thoughts, actions, materials, energies, performances, identities and histories of my body/whole self.

I’m interested in the body/self as both transformative subject and object. I am interested in (somatic) practices that liberate us from cultural and personal conditioning and empower us to feel present, secure, seen and capable in our lived experiences. I’m interested in felt experiences and the universal healing wisdom embedded in each of us. I am interested in mindfulness. I am interested learning from and healing with our ancestors. I am interested in love and what connects us. I am interested in understanding what gets in the way of love. I am interested in care - for myself, my families, my communities, the ancestors, the earth, and you. I am interested in core essence and understanding the truth of our being. I am interested in quantum entanglement, cosmic religion and the holographic paradigm. I love music and sound and dance and movement and making both as often as possible. I love improvising and journeying. I love coffee and the ocean. I love land and sky, sun and wind. I love gardening, cultivating, drawing, and making all manner of useful and “useless” things. I love my daughter more than anything else in this world. I love deep listening.

I have worked with performers, writers, artists, activists, social workers, architects, LGBTQIA+ community, and parents, among many others. I am deeply committed to anti-oppression work, and ongoing personal study, accountability and growth.

As a dancer in my early 20s, I suffered from chronic back pain, a condition which led me to seek relief in chiropractic treatments, deep tissue massage, Rolfing, and acupuncture. All of these modalities offered me some form of relief, but it wasn’t until I was in a dance class led by dancer/choreographer Juliette Mapp that I was introduced to a way of participating in my own healing that wasn’t offered in those other practices. Juliette led us through a warm-up that included what I later learned was an Alexander Technique lie-down with gentle instructions for how to direct our attention to find a little more ease and alignment in our bodies before moving more rigorously. In the first 15 minutes of her class, I felt a release in my neck and back that I thought was only possible with the intervention of acupuncture needles or the assistance of heavy-handed bodywork. I was stunned that I was actually capable of releasing tension in my own body through my thoughts, attention, witnessing, sensing and felt experiencing. This first experience with Alexander Technique (AT) had a profound impact on me and exerted a pull to go deeper into the territory of mindbody practices.

This pull eventually led to me to study with Ann Rodiger, founder of the Balance Arts Center, and to complete her 1600 hr AmSAT certified training course in 2007. My experience with Ann and AT gave me new, otherwise unimaginable, possibilities for choice and ways to participate in my own healing. It was like receiving an owner’s manual for the structural, functional aspects of my body, like learning a holistic physical therapy that allowed me to feel deeply connected in my physical body, and I have not had acute back pain since!

The transformation in my physical body - in coordination, alignment, balance, breath, tension, vocal production- began to shift the tenor of my emotional landscape and regulation as well. However, in exploring the territory of emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing, I felt like I needed guidance and practices that were beyond the scope of AT. My desire to give more attention to the somatic processing of my social, emotional, racial, cultural, psychological, and ancestral experience led me towards work and interest in Jungian Therapy, Buddhist meditation, trauma-informed mind-body therapies such as Focusing Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems and eventually to Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy.

Though Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy had been in my orbit for years, I was led more directly towards it by my then 9-year-old daughter who is dyslexic. I had read that it was helpful for kids with dyslexia, and, intuitively, it felt right for her. I sat in the room during her first session and felt a profound energetic settling in myself that felt resonant with the field of the room. Like there was a shifting, quieting happening within the relational space as well as through all of our bodies. At the end of the session, I felt like I had somehow received a treatment alongside my daughter. This co-regulation and resonance of our nervous systems felt palpable in a way that I had not experienced since she was a baby and piqued my interest in having a session of my own.

Still not really knowing what to expect, and thinking at the very least I would feel relaxed, I went for my first session. I was blown away at how not only relaxed, but nourished and supported I felt by this work. My first treatment coincided with a period of deep grief that I was processing from the traumatic loss of my brother and only sibling during the Covid-19 pandemic. The death of my brother was overwhelming and painful and opened me up to an unparalleled level of suffering. It literally broke my heart, gutted me, and dimmed the light in my spine. I felt extreme bouts of sadness and anxiety as my whole being began to reorganize around this loss. All I wanted to do was collapse and cry. I needed a framework of support that went beyond the structure and function of my body, beyond my freedom of choice, beyond “holding myself up" and into territory that could acknowledge and hold space for deep suffering. BCST offered me the support I was looking for.

From my first BCST session, I experienced a profound, heartfelt and soulful resonance with it. I felt a process of healing happening not only in my physical body but also deeper than my physical body, possibly deeper than this lifetime. It felt as though there was energy and wisdom both universal and ancestral inside of me that could meet my suffering with profound care, and that I could allow myself to be supported in its flow. It not only helped me grieve, it alleviated my anxiety and allowed me to feel reconnected with resilience, source, joy, and to feel at peace with darkness and the profound mysteries of living.

20+ years of experience in professional dance exploring the intersection of dance and somatics through The Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, Feldenkrais Method, Authentic Movement, Movement/Dance Improvisation, Qi Gong, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Embodied Voice, Buddhist Meditation, Pilates, The Gyrotonic®Method, Polyvagal Theory, Yoga, Luciana Achugar’s Pleasure Practice and Pauline Olivero’s Deep Listening Practice.

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Stillpoint, NYC, Current Student.

Embodied Social Justice Certificate, Online Course through The Embody Lab, 2021.

Mindbody Therapy Certificate, Online Course through Embodied Philosophy, partially completed, 2020-2021.

1600 hr Alexander Technique Teacher Training Certification, Balance Arts Center, 2007.

Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training with Max Strom, Kansas City, 2002.

Ashtanga Yoga Teacher Training with David Swenson, Costa Rica, 2001.

Gyrotonic Level 1 Certification with Miriam Barbosa, NYC, 2001.

MFA Photo, Video & Related Media, School of Visual Arts, NYC, 2011.

BFA Dance Performance and Choreography, University of Missouri KC, 1999.

For the last 16 years, I have taught classes, workshops and individual lessons in movement, somatic awareness, mindfulness, embodied presence and the Alexander Technique.

Private Practice (2007-current)

Movement Research (2012-current)

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Movement Faculty (2017-current)

The Balance Arts Center, Senior Assistant on the Teacher Training Program (2015-2021)

The Juilliard School (2019)

Parsons School of Design (2011, 2012)

Playwrights Horizons at NYU (2015, 2016)

Sebene Selassie, Lama Rod Owens, Tich Naht Hahn, Rev angel Kyodo williams, Resmaa Menakem, adrienne marie brown, Prentis Hemphill, Francis Weller, Buddhism, Taoism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qi Gong, Focusing, Body-Mind Centering, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Dr. Sará King, Staci K Haines, Brene Brown, Tara Brach, Sonya Renee Taylor, Shamanism, Yoruba Religion, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Susan Raffo, Alexander Technique Liberation Project, Non-Violent Communication, Pyeng Threadgill, Authentic Movement, Somatic Experiencing, Andrea Olsen, Simone Forti, Pauline Oliveros, Luciana Achugar, Antonio Ramos, Felicia Ballos, Jennifer Monson

Sarah White-Ayón (she/they) is a dancer, poet, visual artist, movement, and somatics teacher with a specialization in the Alexander Technique and a lifelong interest in both Western and non-Western healing practices. For the last 16 years, she has taught classes in movement, somatic awareness, mindfulness, embodied presence, and the Alexander Technique at various schools throughout NYC including Movement Research, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, The Balance Arts Center, Parsons School of Design, Playwrights Horizons at NYU, and The Juilliard School. She is currently a student in training in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy with Stillpoint Wellness.

As an artist, her work spans across and intersects the disciplines of dance, somatics, performance, video and film, sculpture, sound, and collage. Her work has been presented through various venues and organizations including Roulette, Movement Research, Strange Loop Gallery, SVA’s Visual Arts Gallery, AUNTS, iLAND’s iLAB residency (2008), Fritz Haeg’s Sundown Salon, Monkey Town, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and Highways Performance Space and Gallery. As a dancer, she has performed and/or collaborated in the work of such artists as Walter Dundervill, Jessica Hutchins, Eve Sussman and Simon Lee, robbinschilds, Isabel Lewis, Felicia Ballos, Nancy Garcia, Flora Weigman, Rebecca Brooks, Jennifer Monson, Levi Gonzalez, Alex Escalante, Juliette Mapp, Simone Coutu, Jeanine Olsen, Angel Ayón and Gerald Marks among others. Since 2015 she has had the pleasure of performing with Antonio Ramos and The Gangbangers. Notable works include Mira El (2015); Thirsty Mind, Love and Starvation, Sitting in a Lonely Tree (2016); Almodovar Dystopia (2017); and El Pueblo de los Olvidados (2019), Ceremonia (2023). Since 2018 she has also had the pleasure of performing with Luciana Achugar. Notable works include Brujx (2018-2019); New Mass Dance (2018); and Puro Teatro: a spell for utopia (2021).

Learn more about Sarah’s artistic work at: https://www.sarahwhiteayon.com/